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TENNIS; Agassi Finds Treasure In Australian Debut

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Andre Agassi, reborn yet again this time as a balding pirate with a zealot's focus but a rational game plan -- completed his Australian Open debut run with a flourish today, winning his second consecutive Grand Slam tournament and dethroning the top-ranked Pete Sampras at the same time.

In scoring a 4-6, 6-1, 7-6 (8-6), 6-4 victory, the second-ranked Agassi performed the same baseline pyrotechnics that had hurtled him into the final without dropping a single set. His return of serve proved to be more than twice as reliable as that of Sampras's; he committed half the number of unforced mistakes made by the world's No. 1 player and he contributed 10 aces of his own, the last on match point.

Agassi, who now has raised a championship trophy at every Slam except the French Open, managed a calm yet impassioned recovery after surrendering the first set with a double fault on this sizzler of an afternoon.

"Ironically, the one I haven't won yet is the one I felt I should have won first," said Agassi, twice a runner-up in Paris but previously unwilling to make the travel effort it took to compete here. "But I came here believing in myself, believing that I could win. It was the first time I ever came into a Grand Slam believing like that. And now, I'm not worried about winning all of them, I worry about winning each one."

Almost as acquisitive as the player himself, Agassi's latest mentor, Brad Gilbert, flashed his player the Paris signal the instant this Melbourne campaign had ended. Gilbert had predicted a seven-round, 21-set conquest and despite losing his first set of the tournament today, he came through in 21.3 sets thanks to Aaron Krickstein's semifinal injury default with Agassi ahead by 3-0 in the third.

In contrast, Sampras, who last year made a successful defense of five of six titles, for the second straight time found himself deprived of the honor of repeating as a Grand Slam champion.

His 28 aces weren't sufficient artillery to thwart this colorful human backboard who, according to Sampras, "has the best return of serve in the world by far."

"I don't know how much room there is for improvement," Sampras said of Agassi. "If he stays fit, he's a threat to win every single major title of the year."

At the United States Open, a physically wounded Sampras progressed only halfway through the tournament, then watched from the wings as the unseeded Agassi claimed the title. Here in Melbourne, Sampras's wounds were emotional as well as physical.

Sampras was already the sentimental favorite because of his stylistic resemblance to and reverence for old-time Aussie champions like his touchstone, Rod Laver.

But Sampras earned further respect for the genuine and unashamed despair he displayed after his coach, Tim Gullikson, was stricken just before the third round, hospitalized and then sent home to Chicago for further testing.

"I would have loved to have won it for him and been able to dedicate this victory to him," Sampras said, "but once it started, I was so wrapped up in the match, just trying to hang on, that that's all that was on my mind."

Nor did he link his loss to the obvious residual fatigue of having played 14 grueling sets of tennis in the three preceding rounds.

"The matches I've played definitely took a toll, but that's not an excuse," Sampras said. "I did the best I could and lost to a better player.

"I'm not going to out-rally Andre. He's one of the best players in the world when it comes to ground-stroke confrontations, and although he's obviously always had all the talent in the world, he's put it all together in the last six months."

The opening set went to Sampras after Agassi, whose tennis here had been virtually mistake-free at key junctures, fired off two uncharacteristic double faults, the second of which came at 15-40 of the 10th game. But when Sampras let down his guard for an instant, Agassi roared back into the second set and took a 4-0 lead.

In the third set, they traded breaks in the third and fourth games, and then marched into the most unpredictable of tie breakers. Agassi's 3-0 lead evaporated when Sampras captured 4 consecutive points.

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Sampras gained a set point at 6-4 with a brilliant reflex volley, but Agassi denied him the set by snaking a forehand return down the sideline. An overhit forehand from Sampras knotted things at 6-6, and when he sent a forehand return long, Agassi converted his first set point by ending a lengthy rally with a deft backhand volley.

Though Sampras began spewing out aces again in the final set after coming up empty in the tie breaker -- he served three in both the first and seventh games -- Agassi held his ground.

"I had a lot of sympathy for me when he was hitting those aces -- pow!" quipped Agassi, who felt 12 of them whiz past in the final set alone but rendered them all meaningless when he broke with a boundary-splintering backhand pass for a 5-4 lead.

Agassi said he wouldn't interpret this victory as proof that he, and not Sampras, is the world's best player. Not yet.

"He wasn't the best player in the world today," said Agassi, "but the reality is he's clearly ahead of everybody.

"I'll continue to strive, but certainly just because you win one match doesn't mean you should be No. 1 in the world. Pete's a professional, and he's proven that over these past few weeks. When he beat these guys, it wasn't because they felt sorry for him, it's because he raised his game to a level where they couldn't finish him off."

Agassi and Sampras have long dined out on the curiosity of being each other's antithesis in the public eye, their private lives and in their playing styles, so it came as little surprise that they took two very different routes to this final.

Sampras, the introvert, made personal history not only by twice resurrecting himself from two-sets-to-none deficits, but also when his emotions got the better of him when he forced Jim Courier to a fifth set in their quarterfinal. It was a prolonged catharsis in which Sampras surprised even himself not just with his public display of vulnerability, but his improbable ability to cry and play invincible tennis at the same time.

"Once I started crying I couldn't stop, but you know, it actually made me feel better; I'd been keeping everything inside trying to stay strong for Tim and Tom," he said of the identical twins, one his coach, the other the United States Davis Cup captain. "But once I got that out of me, I just told myself to keep on fighting, that I wasn't going to give up my title that easily."

While Sampras toiled, Agassi gave himself a different surprise here in his Melbourne debut; he tap-danced giddily but purposefully toward the final. Then, for the first time in his career, defeated Sampras despite losing the opening set to him. All five of Agassi's previous victories over Sampras had been of a snappy, straight-set nature.

In their only previous meeting in a Grand Slam final, it was a teen-aged Sampras who grabbed the glory by becoming the United States Open's youngest champion ever in 1990. Sampras entered the match today with a 5-1 record in Slam finals while Agassi owned a less convincing 2-3 record.

All they really had in common heading into today's 2-hour-36-minute encounter in broad daylight -- besides their baggy Nike shorts and the respective local Italian chefs they found to be at their beck and call when the mood for pasta struck -- was a common desire not to walk out of the final a runner-up.

All they have in common now, besides a mutual respect, is the sense that theirs could be a rivalry for the record books.

"It has to lift the game," said Sampras, who now leads their rivalry by a nose, 7-6. "The game's been missing a rivalry, but Andre is one guy who puts tennis on the front page.

"I knew it was only a matter of time before Andre came around and put it all together, but I'm up to the challenge. I can't wait to play him again."

A version of this article appears in print on January 30, 1995, on Page C00008 of the National edition with the headline: TENNIS; Agassi Finds Treasure In Australian Debut. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe